In this article, Dileep Rao –Professor of Management & International Business of Florida International University, and Forbes´ columnist - described the purchase of Univision by Cisneros, as an example of how great entrepreneurs use fear to succeed. September, 2013

1. How Great Entrepreneurs Use
Fear To Succeed: Lessons From
Billion-Dollar Entrepreneurs
In his first inaugural address at the onset of the Great Depression,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt uttered one of the more memorable lines
of the English language, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The
reason this line resonates through the generations is because fear can
paralyze us. Many of my students tell me that they stay in their stifling
corporate jobs and do not pursue their dream because they fear failure
(and the loss of health insurance). Many of the entrepreneurs I have
talked to, and worked with, told me that their first step, when they first
put their necks on the line, was the most difficult.
I interviewed Gustavo Cisneros who is one of eight children of Diego
Cisneros. Diego Cisneros built a business empire in Venezuela. When it
came time for Diego Cisneros to appoint a successor, he picked Gustavo
Cisneros, who amply justified his father’s confidence in him and led the
Cisneros Group from one of Venezuela’s great companies to one of the
world’s great ones. Continuing his family tradition of picking the next-
generation leader, Cisneros picked his daughter Adriana from among his
three children. When I asked Gustavo Cisneros why his father had picked
him, and why he picked his daughter, he answered “because I am fearless,
and she is the same.”

2. Do you have to be fearless or is fear
actually a good motivator? Fear of
failure can encourage you to evaluate
major risks and find ways to reduce
them. Fear can encourage
entrepreneurs to form alliances and
develop strategies to improve the odds
of success. Fear can spur us to work
harder, learn more, and manage
better. Mark Cuban uses the fear of
failure and his desire to win to motivate himself, and Lew Frankfort
insists on an “enormous amount of research” before launching a new
enterprise within Coach COH +1.26%. And by fearless, does Cisneros mean
fearless after preparation, or fearless without it?
To understand this, it helps to know the level of planning and analysis
Cisneros undertakes BEFORE launching major endeavors. As an example,
before he purchased the deteriorating Univision from Hallmark and built
it into a powerhouse with two partners, he did the following:
 He understood the weakness of Telemundo, his key competitor for the U.S.
Hispanic market
 He knew his partner Emilio Azcárraga Milmo from their previous work together
and understood his strengths
 He knew that they needed an American partner who was an expert on American
television, and picked Jerry Perenchio, who had owned the station where
Cisneros’s manager had worked
 He knew that both he and Azcárraga Milmo had content from their TV companies
in Mexico, Central and South America, and they could channel these shows into
Univision. As Pablo Bachelet (Cisneros’s biographer) notes, content is to TV as
water is to land, and the two partners had plenty of content between them. So
they were leveraging their assets.
 He worked for almost a year to get both partners in the deal and spent that time
to develop an agreement that was a “hedge against the bad tempers of his
partners” (from Bachelet’s book).

3. Based on my interviews with, and analysis of, the practices of Cisneros,
here are some suggestions to overcome fear:
 Do your due diligence and understand everything that can go wrong
 Develop strategies to minimize the risk of failure
 Understand and leverage your competitive advantage to stack the odds in your
favor
 Get the right ingredients and partners, perhaps those with whom you have
worked before, to know why you will succeed even before you start
 Launch with full intensity and courage.
MY TAKE: Get started on your dream when the pain of inaction exceeds
the fear of action. As Tom Robbins noted in “Even Cowgirls get the Blues,”
“Heaven is living in your hopes, and hell is living in your fears.” It is
difficult to conquer your inner demons, and one of the worst demons is
fear. Are great entrepreneurs fearless? What I have found is that the
common factor among most billion-dollar entrepreneurs, and especially
the ones I interviewed, is that they started when they found their passion,
which helps to overcome fear. Usually they were young, but age was not a
barrier. Col. Sanders was said to be in his 60s when he started KFC. Fear
can be good if you prepare for it, understand the situation, reduce risks,
develop your strength, test your advantage, and use this confidence to
jump in. During the Cuban struggle for independence, Emilio Bacardi (in
their ads) noted that “if we have to die, so then we die.” My suggestion –
do not die before you are dead.